Jodie Foster Quotes

Jodie Foster Quotes On Acting

Acting just happens to be my skill, but I think I would probably be just as happy being a technician or entering into the film business in some other way.

Acting, for me, is exhausting. I’m always more energized by directing. It’s more intense to direct. I can pop in and express myself, then pop out again. It’s a huge passion for me.

With ‘Taxi Driver,’ I had this eureka moment. I realized that acting could be much more than what I had been doing. I had to build a character that wasn’t me.

I can’t imagine ever not doing [acting]. I would feel like I would have lost a limb. But I am older now, and sometimes I wonder who I would have been and what about me would have changed had I not had these experiences as a young person

I don’t find acting and directing schizophrenic, in any way. I find it completely easy to move between the two.

Jodie Foster Quotes On Character

As an actor, I’m always playing solitary characters. But as a director, I’m always making ensemble movies, which focus on lots of people’s lives and how they intertwine.

I have, in some ways, saved characters that have been marginalized by society by playing them – and having them still have dignity and still survive, still get through it.

As time goes on, I will play characters who get older: I don’t want to be some Botoxed weirdo.

I look back at my career when I was younger and can connect what I was going through at the time with the characters I was playing. I see the similarities in them reflecting on my life.

Otherness is a big thing for me. I’m always drawn to characters that live lives that I couldn’t lead.

Jodie Foster Quotes On Children

I don’t know why people think child actresses in particular are screwed up. I see kids everywhere who are totally bored. I’ve never been bored a day in my life.

Adolescence is a tough one to be a child actor.

My mom was always late. It drove me crazy as a child. So I’m always on time – or early.

I had a prodigious life, living in a grown-up world when I was a child. But I think my abilities were about perceptiveness, and they were about examining psychology and examining people and relationships.

You guys might be surprised, but I am not Honey Boo Boo Child.

Jodie Foster Quotes On College

I conducted a bunch of interviews for Interview magazine. They actually paid me. I think I was probably 18 or 19. I was in college and I remember feeling, like, “Wow.” I had a real job, and they paid me money, and it was exciting.

I made, like, five movies while I was in college. I think they just weren’t memorable movies. I’ve taken breaks as the years have gone on – I burn out every once in a while.

I did a couple of plays in junior high school, maybe high school, and then I did a play in college.

I was a literature major in college and that was my thing, books.

When I think about what part of my college experience came back in my work experience, I feel like it was learning how to read deeper, learning how to keep filling the movie up with more and more resonance.

I saw leaving college as an opportunity to do something different with my life. I always thought that becoming an academic was going to be my path.

Jodie Foster Quotes On Film

The best reason to make a film is that you feel passionately about it.

By the first week of shooting, you know exactly where your film is heading based on the psychology of your director.

Interestingly, when you do films, sometimes you have conscious reasons, things that you were looking for, or stuff that you were trying to do. And then, you see the film and you think, “Wow, it ended up being something totally different!”

I love European movies and I kind of grew up on European films.

I prefer to commit 100 per cent to a movie and make fewer films, because it takes over your life.

I think I missed all of the wonderful things … I missed the control that you have in film, and I missed getting it right, really getting it right, the way you hope people will see it. All of the things that people love about theater – the fact that it changes every night and that it’s so spontaneous – all of those things just frighten me.

It’s hard to get personal films off the ground, and it’s hard developing them.

Acting just happens to be my skill, but I think I would probably be just as happy being a technician or entering into the film business in some other way.

I was one of those avid moviegoers as a kid, and we didn’t have video, so we went to see everything five times. I went to see every foreign film playing in my town. As times went on, I watched a lot less films. I have a different film school now. My film school now is my life experience.

Well, I certainly was exposed to and learned to appreciate the work of great directors early on. As a kid, my mother used to take me to see really interesting arty films in Los Angeles.

I do think it’s true that anytime somebody comes to you and says, “I’d like to be in your film,” it’s never good to dismiss them or make fun of them, because if they’re passionate and driven enough, they very well might find a way to be in your film.

Jodie Foster Quotes On Focus

As an actor, I’m always playing solitary characters. But as a director, I’m always making ensemble movies, which focus on lots of people’s lives and how they intertwine.

I make movies about people in spiritual crisis because it’s a way for me to spend the time, the energy, the focus and the obsession to come to terms with my own spiritual crisis.

It’s a skill that people are born with. Either you’re a focuser or you’re a multitasky person. I am a full-focus person.

I like to be in a different place when I make a movie so that I can’t really focus on anything else, and that is your world.

Jodie Foster Quotes On Mom

There’s absolutely no sort of acknowledgment or reward for this – except for the intangible of my kids growing up to be wonderful people.

I had to take my makeup off at work every night. I wasn’t allowed to do it at home because my mom said that when your work day is done, you’re done with work.

My mom was always late. It drove me crazy as a child. So I’m always on time – or early.